Posts Tagged ‘DR Congo’
Dear Madam Secretary Clinton
Dear Madam Secretary Clinton,
We applaud your visit to Congo last year. As American women, business owners, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, runners, and others deeply concerned with Congo, we are proud of your interest and commitment to Eastern Congo.
However, if the IRC mortality study statistics have held, more than 500,000 Congolese people have died since your visit. Tens of thousands of women, children, and even infants have been raped, including the recent incident of close to 200 women and infants, within 10 miles of a UN compound. This is our shame.
The USA has taken precious little action. That needs to change today. You are the leader to make it happen.
- You promised Congo 17 million dollars. Why is it still sitting in a US Government account, buried in red tape? Unacceptable. Please do what you must to get this critically needed aid to Congolese women today.
- The culture of impunity in Congo must end. Congo needs a justice system. The Congolese army must be professionalized, so soldiers “protect and serve” rather than “steal and rape”. We urge you to coordinate with donor governments and the Congolese government to spearhead a comprehensive national security sector reform plan for Congo.
Congolese women and children need your immediate action. We look forward to celebrating your bold, immediate leadership on this critical issue.
Sincerely,
A Thousand Sisters
{Please add YOUR name and personal note to Secretary Clinton here. I’ll pass it on!}
Lisa Shannon, Founder, Run for Congo Women, Author A Thousand Sisters, Sister to Generose & Thousands of other Congolese women.
Tracking down Generose w/ Nick Kristof
Had the best evening with Nick Kristof, tracking down my dear sister Generose in her little home on the outskirts of Bukavu, trekking through deep mud in the dark to her little house for long conversation under tin roof pounding with rain, lit by headlamps. A major life moment.
Heading out this morning to find the baby Lisa, named after me. Two Lisa’s!
Dear “Kelly”: An unsent apology
Dear “Kelly”,
When I sat down to write my book about the journey into Congo, I started with a list- everything I did not want to include in the book. The list was long- the secrets that could cost lives, the painful breakdown of my relationship with “Ted” over Congo work, the awkward collaboration with my sometimes-crazy mother, the romantic escape to Zanzibar with (gasp!) a man I met on the terrace at the Orchid Safari Club, but mostly my embarrassing ego and grandiosity and epic (but inevitable) missteps along the way. You were on the list.
In early drafts, I tried to skim over the unspoken tension of our supposedly “joint” trip in an effort to be fair and tasteful, but editors called me out. In fact, 90% of that do-not-include list ended up in the book. Nothing trumps an honest, emotionally transparent story – except life-threatening safety issues. (It’s Congo. What can I say?)
After getting notes from yet another editor saying I needed to flesh you out and tell the whole story, I sat at my desk on Vashon Island, overlooking the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains range beyond, squirming, thinking “I don’t want to write this.”
Then I re-read some of your post Congo notes and blogs, and caught the not-so-subtle jabs. Obviously, the tension was pronounced and mutual.
I spilled it. The walk under the Capitol Building in DC, when you called my work “just pity.” The weirdly indirect manor you let me know- on our first day in Congo- it would not be a joint trip at all. (Basically doubling the cost of my trip!) The mazungu girl-fight on the ride home from Baraka. How you left me scrambling to explain to your own sponsored sister why you would travel all the way from America to Congo, but could not make the time to meet her.
Yep, it pissed me off. And I wrote it all. The book is now off to the printers.
I still feel like a jerk. Worse. A hypocrite.
Because if there was one thing I learned from you, and especially your long silence following the trip, it was that nothing is more damaging to a movement than criticizing fellow activists who are giving it their best effort. However imperfect, perhaps buoyed with ego and grandiosity, maybe saying and doing the wrong things, our job is to show up. To say something. To take a step. The rest we can figure out as we go.
I don’t expect you to like the way you are represented in the book, or even understand. If I were you, I wouldn’t, and for that I am so sorry. But I do want you to know this: whatever judgment or frustration I express in the book, absolutely none of it trumps my profound respect for the fact that you showed up for Congo. You have played a critical early role in building a lasting movement, the reverberations of this journey, our honesty about our mutual shortcomings and missteps, we can’t ever know. But I know this for sure: By showing up, you have changed the future of Congo and by extension the face of humanity.
Well done, lady. Well done.
With deepest gratitude,
Lisa
Survey: Top 3 solutions the grassroots should push to solve the crisis in Congo?
Some of my recent posts on conflict minerals have sparked some lively, substantive debate on the best solutions for Congo. Brilliant! Let’s continute the discussion on key solutions for Congo.
Several months ago, I had the great pleasure of meeting with the brilliant Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost and Bury the Chains, and expert on building social movements. He explained that every successful social movement has no more than 3 or 4 key “asks”/ levers to address the issue. Think “Ban Apartheid” or “Abolish Slavery”.
I have some solid ideas, but no easy answers. So I ask you- I’d love your thoughts: What are the top 3 actionable “asks” or levers the grassroots should push for to solve the crisis in Congo?
Anyone? Anyone?
I’ll post my thoughts after others have a chance to share!
Show me the money. How your cell phone is funding atrocities in Congo & what you can do about it.
When I speak to groups about Congo on the human cost of the war in Congo, some keen individual always raises their hand in the back of the room and asks, “So who’s making money off of all this?”
Ding, ding, ding, ding! It’s the hundred million dollar question.
The DR Congo is among the most mineral rich countries on the planet, with stores of more than 1,100 minerals, including diamonds, gold, copper, tin, cobalt, tungsten, and 15-20% of the world’s tantalum, otherwise known as coltan, an essential semi-conductor in electronics like cell phones, laptops, video games, and digital cameras. You likely have a chunk of Congo in your pocket.
The United Nations has accused all nations involved in the conflict as using the war as a cover for looting. How does it work? Militias control territories that contain mines. The militias mine and export themselves, or “tax” locals who do the work for them. Everyone seems to be in on the action: Corrupt government officials who line their pockets through shady contracts; foreign militias; foreign governments who back militias; the Congolese government army; the Mai Mai and other home-grown militias; and of course, the Interahamwe, who control the majority of mines in South Kivu. In a few cases, even UN soldiers. The New York Times ran a report by Lydia Polgreen in December 2008, outlining such an operation, run by a renegade Congolese army brigade, who control a remote, mineral rich area, “master of every hilltop as far as the eye can see.” Unchallenged, they employ locals at ultra-low wages to mine, block all paths, and lug loads of ore via remote forest trails- as far as 30 miles- to the nearest road, where the goods are trucked to a stretch of road that serves as a landing strip for Soviet-era cargo planes, who fly them to Goma or out of Congo. How much does a guy make carving out his own slice of this pie? One official estimates $300,000 to $600,000 in “taxes” alone. This operation is estimated to be worth as much as $80 million a year.
The goods are illegally exported to countries like Rwanda or Uganda, who in turn ship them to processing plants, primarily in Asia. Eventually, large corporations buy them and distribute these conflict riches around the world in the form of our favorite consumer goods: diamond engagement rings, Sony Playstations waiting under the Christmas tree, that sleek, new MacBook Air, or our ever-precious Crack-berries.
According to The Enough Project, in 2008 alone, armed groups will have made $185 million from illegal trade of Congo’s minerals. Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi, as well as Congolese government officials, have made hundreds of millions of dollars off of the Congo plunder. For instance, in the first half of 2008, Rwanda’s primary tin mine will produce about five tons per month. Yet, in the same period Rwanda will report 2,679 tons in tin exports. According to UN reports, when Rwanda seized control of eastern Congo in the late 1990’s, they smuggled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of coltan, cassiterite, and diamonds to Rwanda. The New York Times quotes one Rwandan government official, “I used to see generals at the airport coming back from Congo with suitcases full of cash.”
But rebel groups can only control the minerals if they control the territory. And they can only control the territory if they control the people. And there is one age-old way to control the people: terror. As one Harvard researcher puts it, there seems to be a “competition among armed groups to be the most brutal.”
We can stop the atrocities in Congo if we stop the gravy train fueling the conflict. Log onto the Enough Project website and send a message to 21 of the top electronics companies letting them know you support Conflict free electronics. It takes about a minute. Then reach out to your friends and ask them to do the same.
http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/1659/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6265
A Thousand Sisters - In bookstores April 2010. Pre-order now! BUY the book
Some of my favorite, accessible reading on the Congo. LEARN more
Find your own Furaha. What you can do for Congo right now. Take ACTION
Watch the Video
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